


Mysteries of the Universe

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Cats, Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 13:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ed does not want the damn cat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mysteries of the Universe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pax_et_Lux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pax_et_Lux/gifts).



> Stupid [Edblog](http://who-you-callin.tumblr.com/) has lately made me very BAD at sitting down and writing actual fic, so I tried to shake myself out of the habit a little by writing a thing for [Pax](http://edroy.tumblr.com/). (Because [SQUEEEEE](http://edroy.tumblr.com/post/71278199951/im-so-angry-i-did-like-a-million-doodles-of-this)!)

“Fuck this shit,” Ed says. “No. No way.”

Roy strokes his hand along their present’s spine, and she arches gracefully up into the touch. “Why not? She’s beautiful.”

“She’s a fucking monster,” Ed says. “All cats are. They’re _evil_ , and they shed everywhere, and they claw your face while you’re sleeping, and they barf in your bed.”

“Surely not all at once,” Roy says. The cat butts its head against the heel of his hand until he pets behind her ears.

“And Al should have better manners,” Ed says, “than to give us an _animal_ without any warning. You can’t just do that. I taught him better than that. Just because he _enjoys_ coopting their fucking fleas and cutting himself on their fucking food cans and shoveling their fucking litter and—”

“What should we call her?” Roy asks, scratching under the cat’s chin.

“Oh, no,” Ed says. “Don’t you _dare_. If you name it, you’ll want to keep i—”

“Princess,” Roy says. “Because you are, aren’t you? What a _pretty_ girl you are.”

The cat purrs approval.

“I fucking hate you,” Ed says. “And the cat, and my brother, and _everything_.”

“Somebody’s a _sourpuss_ ,” Roy confides to Princess.

Ed’s growl is more impressive than the cat’s.

 

* * *

 

Ed was _not_ exaggerating; he hates _everything_.

Most of all he hates Roy’s smug, stupid, almost-still-cute laugh, and cat fur on his face when he’s trying to get to _sleep_.

“Get this thing _off_!” is not such an unreasonable request, but apparently all of Roy’s ongoing protestations of love and affection were _lies_.

“I think she likes you,” Roy says, so maybe he’s not a liar; maybe he’s just _batshit fucking crazy_.

“It’s trying to smother me,” Ed says, managing to pry a cat paw out of his eye socket only to have another take its place. “Are you seeing this, asshole? The animal is trying to _murder me_ , and it’s only the _first night_.”

At long last Roy takes pity and lifts the cat up, setting it down on his own chest, which is _Ed’s spot_ , thank you very fucking much. Roy runs his hand slowly down the cat’s back and then rubs a curled finger behind its ear, and what Ed is feeling is one-hundred-percent pure undiluted _disgust_ , without an iota of jealousy. Because that would be stupid. He’s not jealous of a _cat_.

“Are you sure you don’t want to keep her?” Roy asks. “It might take a bit of getting used to, but she’s awfully low-maintenance, all things considered. Unlike some _people_ I’m more than happy to house here.”

“Fuck you,” Ed says. “Which the cat _isn’t_ going to do, and which I’m not either until you’re done being a fucking dumbass.”

“Don’t you get lonely when you’re here by yourself some days?” Roy asks, ruffling at the fur down along the cat’s front and grinning at the way it kneads him with its claws to make sure he’s ripe for eating. “It might be nice to have another life form around when you’re toiling away for fifteen hours without a break.”

“Breaks are for the weak,” Ed says. “I don’t get _lonely_. And I don’t need a fucking hairball machine shredding the curtains and distracting me from my work.”

“All right,” Roy says—mildly, which is a bad sign, because any concession on something he wants is _actually_ just a fake-out as part of a larger plan. “I have a late meeting tomorrow, but when I get back, we can make sure to tell Alphonse to take her back to the shelter and put her back in a cage and leave her there until hopefully someone else finds it in their heart to love her.”

Ed doesn’t move a fucking muscle, because if he does, this horrible throbbing thing in his throat will grow until it chokes him.

Roy sits up to relocate the cat very gently towards their feet, which it’s probably going to try to snack on in the middle of the night. It’s just curling up there and closing its eyes because it _knows_ they’ll let their guards down.

“I’m sorry,” Roy says quietly. “That wasn’t fair of me. You would have to do most of the work taking care of her, and I have no right to dictate that a pet should take priority over how you prefer to spend your time.”

“It’s fine,” Ed says to the ceiling.

“It’s not,” Roy says, lying down again and curling a few fingers in Ed’s hair this time. “I shouldn’t have said that. Let’s just… give it until tomorrow, and then we can decide together, all right?”

“Whatever,” Ed says, and the warm cat-lump nestles in against his right foot, and this is _stupid_ , that’s all.

 

* * *

 

They have developed a fairly effective routine over the past several months, in which Roy reluctantly gets up very early and then gradually coaxes Ed out of bed with the smell of brewing coffee. This morning, Princess raises her head when Roy pummels the button to turn off the alarm, and then she hops down from the bed, bats at the hem of his robe as he puts it on, and pads down the hall behind him.

“No coffee for you, I’m afraid,” he tells her as he fires up the machine. “Let’s find you something for breakfast, shall we?”

For all of Ed’s bitching and moaning about his brother’s poor etiquette, Al did provide a very large wicker basket full of supplies to accompany the livelier part of their gift. Armed with his superior intellect and a superior can opener (as he has actually had a nightmare about those awful pull tabs before), it doesn’t take Roy long to furnish ( _fur_ nish—he’ll have to harass Ed with that one later) Princess with a bowl of food.

He leaves her to it as he puts some bread in the toaster for Ed, and by the time he’s sitting down with cereal, the newspaper, and a mug of coffee, Princess has decimated the newly-founded town of Cat Food and is leaping up onto his lap and curling up against him. Roy pauses, puts the newspaper down, finds some blank margin space, and reaches across the table for one of Ed’s abandoned but-what-if-inspiration-strikes-at-dinner pens. He begins the list called _Why We Should Keep the Cat_ with item one (“she is adorable”), item two (“we will not get rodents”), item three (“she is _adorable_ , Ed, look at her”), item four (“she has been in the house eighteen hours and has not made a single noise or created a single mess, and I think that is a fortuitous sign”), and item five (“please?”).

Right as he finishes, there are staggering footsteps and a muffled curse in the hall, followed by Ed stumbling into the kitchen. His hair is _everywhere_ , the knuckles of his left hand are being ground against one eye, and there’s a faint trail of dried drool from the corner of his mouth.

“Good morning, beautiful,” Roy says, meaning it.

“Hi,” Ed says. He gestures towards the countertop. “S’coffee.”

“Yes, it is,” Roy says. Princess has raised her head and is watching Ed carefully; Roy strokes down her spine, but she doesn’t move.

Ed stares back at her. “…s’cat.”

“Your morning acumen is nothing short of revelatory,” Roy says.

“Not _short_ ,” Ed mutters. He then strains to the furthest reaches of his tip-toes to reach the mugs on the middle shelf. Fortunately, the one thing Ed is _very_ good at when only half-awake is pouring himself coffee in order to get himself to three-quarters of wakefulness. He leans back against the counter with his prize clutched in both hands and frowns; the steam alone seems to have roused him a bit. “Why’s the cat looking at me?”

“She likes you,” Roy says.

“Cats don’t like anything,” Ed says. “They’re soul-sucking monster-things.”

Roy trails a finger back behind an elegant feline shoulder. “Then why does your brother love them so much?”

Ed blinks. He blows on his coffee, sips, grimaces, and sips some more. Then he sighs and shrugs.

“Mysteries of the universe,” he says.

“I see,” Roy says.

 

* * *

 

Maybe Roy has a tiny fragment of a little point about how quiet the stupid house gets when he’s off pretending to work. Most of the time Ed wouldn’t notice if a bomb went off, so the whole pin-drop silence except for him turning pages or the pencil scratching wouldn’t matter in the least, but some days it is kind of… weird. Maybe it does get an eensy bit _too_ quiet every now and again, as the morning wears into afternoon, and the air goes still and silent and _oppressive_ somehow.

Well, silent except for the cat’s nails clicking on the hardwood as it follows him _everywhere_ in his aimless prowl around the premises.

After a while he just has to _turn_ on the damn overgrown rat. “What do you _want_?”

The cat has one paw raised for the next step, and its ears go back against its little head. It’s just… looking at him. What the hell is wrong with this cat, anyway? Al’s cats always just _ignore_ him, but this one keeps trying to climb on his face and snuggle with his feet and _watch him all the time_.

Stupid cat. Probably the stupid thing can’t even be reasoned with.

Ed figures it can’t really hurt to try, though, so he sits down on the floor to get on the cat’s level and frowns at it. The cat sits, too, and wraps its tail around itself a little bit.

“Look,” Ed says. “I don’t know what your game is. Obviously you’ve got Roy fooled with the whole cutesy act, but _I_ see through all that shit.”

The cat gets up, hesitates, pads towards him a few steps, hesitates, and then rubs its face against his ankle.

“Not good enough,” Ed says. “You think I’m a sucker?”

The cat meows. But not too loud—kind of a nice meow.

“All right,” Ed says. “You get a week. You hear me? You’re on borrowed time, whisker-face. Probation. _Purr_ obation. Roy’s gonna like that one.”

He levers himself up to his feet and brushes himself off. The cat’s still gazing up at him, sitting again, tail swishing back and forth. If nothing else, Teacher did always say cats were the _best_ predators to observe to learn about power and balance and form. He’s been letting a lot of his training fall by the wayside lately; maybe it’s a good time to take a lesson from nature and learn how to _hunt_.

For now, though, he should really bang his head against this whole triangulated arrays problem he’s been stuck on for _days_. Eventually he’s going to crack it. Or his skull. Either way, he won’t find out unless he puts the hours in, right?

He goes into what used to be Roy’s home office—before he commandeered it and covered it in old books and new diagrams—and looks balefully at a couple of sketches and scribbles from yesterday.

“Hey, cat,” he says as a shadow sidles in, dragging the length of its body against the doorframe for some reason. “You know anything about alchemy?”

The cat leaps artistically up onto a chair and looks at him.

“Didn’t think so,” Ed says. He shuffles through his crap-ass notes and then puts them down. “All right, then, I’ll start from the beginning. You better keep up.”

The cat blinks.

 

* * *

 

Roy hears Ed’s voice from down the hall as soon as he opens the door—which is strange, because there aren’t any extra shoes in the foyer, and the telephone’s still on the side table; it hasn’t been manhandled down the corridor.

He has a hunch, of course. He toes off his boots and creeps down the hall as quietly as he’s capable of, and then he peeks through the narrow gap in the door.

Ed is sketching avidly on his easel; there are ripped and crumpled sheets of butcher paper all over the floor, and he’s gesticulating insanely as he goes.

“But it’s about _balance_ ,” he says, “just like you and your dumb tail—because if the vertices pointed inward don’t _correlate_ , then what’s the _point_? And then—angles—aw, shit, I mean, we’re talking _basic_ geometry here; how could I be so fucking _dumb_? Don’t answer that. Look, these two are like little cat ears. I hope you’re happy. Oh, _man_ , where’s my fucking Crollius…?”

He falls upon one of the piles of books like an avenging angel—or perhaps a hurricane—and sends up a flurry of papers in his wake. All the while, Princess sits placidly on the corner of the desk, watching his progress intently with her curious bright green eyes.

Roy retreats to the kitchen without a sound. Dinner isn’t going to order itself for delivery, after all, and there’s another call he wants to make.

Alphonse picks up on the second ring. “Hello?”

“How exactly,” Roy says, “did you find a cat that would gravitate towards your brother’s voice?”

“I didn’t,” Al says. “I just had a good feeling. Does she _really_?”

“You wouldn’t believe it if you saw it,” Roy says. “How do you _do_ it?”

Al sighs contentedly. “A magician never tells.”


End file.
